“I don’t have time,” she said, knowing she could skip her homework, that the homework shouldn’t matter more than her brothers; but also knowing that she couldn’t stay overnight in this house, where at every moment she felt the darkness closing around her like a cold, lonely cave. Knowing that part of the reason she needed to go was to escape the sadness of these boys. Selfish coward.

She kissed their freckled noses before she left, told them to take care of one another. It was something Katu often said to them, when he took off on his adventures. “You kids take care of each other until I get back, all right?” It occurred to her to wonder—for the first time—if Katu left because he was excited about where he was going, or because he also felt the trap closing around him if he stayed.

Shutting Vikti’s bedroom door, Lovisa snuck out of the nursery wing and made her way to the door at the base of the attic steps. She was curious about her mother’s supposed renovations. When had these “renovations” started, exactly? Shouldn’t there be signs of disarray? Paper on the floors to protect the rugs from workers’ boots, or something like that? Lovisa knew better. Why all the secrecy about whatever Benni was keeping in the attic room?

Ferla’s fox sat in front of the attic door. She was certain it was him; though foxes looked a lot alike, she recognized that malevolent gaze, and her mother’s fox had a longish nose and jaunty ears. He was panting, and also guarding a pastry that sat on the rug at his feet. It was odd behavior, but it hardly mattered. What mattered were his glimmering eyes, resting on Lovisa’s suspicious face.

Downstairs, dinner was breaking up, guests milling through the drawing rooms and the game room, teas in hand. Lovisa decided to let her parents and Quona figure out for themselves that Giddon and Hava had gone. Finding her coat, she slipped outside into the cold. She wanted to go around to the back of the house and look up at the attic room window—for a light? A sign? A clue? Of what? Something impulsive her father had done? Some way in which he was damaging his own business?

But the fox had already seen her. It wasn’t worth the door guards seeing her too.

The house glowed with the light of silbercow oil as she headed toward campus.

—